wind farms - whar are your views...?

The answer is clear but not simple.

Nuclear fusion power. They are closer than you think.

The problem will still be to convince the anti-nuclear lobby that it is completely different from using fission as a heat source, with all it's radioactive waste products.

To be honest though, I do think the arguments against current nuclear power technology are highly emotive and only passingly associated with the facts. People just equate nuclear with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is totally possible to create power stations that will never ever create a nuclear explosion. Sure the consequences of such incidents as chernobyl are far worse than could possibly happen with a wind farm or coal power station, but people seem to be blinded by potential catasrophes without looking at the true risk of such a thing happening. How many lives has coal power cost over the years?? Miners deaths, power station workers deaths, the deaths caused by the polution of coal power stations, the overall effect on the environment etc. The same is true of oil and gas production for energy use. Because the impact is hidden and insiduous we see it as "safe" power when it is anything but. It's like road deaths vs plane crashes. Take the commet, a couple of disasters with a hundred or so deaths in one go and people move heaven and earth to solve the issue. The insiduous drip drip of one death here and two deaths there on the roads are pretty much ignored. The simple fact is that coal, oil, hydro electric power production have caused more human deaths and damage to the environment than nuclear power ever has and is likely to in reality. Do people actually realise that the radio active material used in nuclear power plants is already existing in the earth anyway? Emmitting it's radiation in to the earth. By using it and then disposing of it "off earth" we would actually be ridding the earth of radioactive sources.

As for the NIMBY syndrome. Of course no one wants a nuclear power plant on their doorstep. But how many would want their local villiage drowned under a hydroelectric dam lake or a coal power station at the end of their road either?


GTM

 

I personaly feel Mike should install a dozen or so virtual wind farms here on Z/G the amount of hot air that flies around here should power them for decades
Seems like wind power while only contributing a small portion to the total n/g consumption has serious polictical overtones and incentives amid at 'helping the voters understand' cheesy grin spins take on the green issue yet more quango's and uneccesary bullshite that whitehall manderines shuffle about the palace of westminster, Que mike for a diplomatic bail out

 

Nuclear Fusion is of course the answer as GTM pointed out (I totally forgot to mention that in my earllier post ). I don't know how close we are to achieving it though.

I think most people will understand the difference between fusion and fission. Maybe not the technical details but if you tell them that fusion creates no waste, doesn't use or create radioactive material, and is the same system the sun uses then I think they'll get it

Wonder what happened to Fleischmann and Pons, the guys who claimed to have discovered "cold" fusion....perhaps they've gone into the audiophile cable business

Michael.

 

Thats very naughty Micheal looking inside of one of our foo foo boxes, still I spose the weight of the them did give a clue really

 

Hot air? These opinions are so much level headed stuff aand more inteligent....other then my contribution.... then all those printed in the so call serious newspapers that sales by millions but no one claims to ever read.

My guess is all cheap alternative power sources are still a long way off. We really have to get many many of these uneconomical green generators.

If they are just around the corners then why are the big boys still fighting so hard over those dirty oil fields?

 

I believe the nuclear fusion idea is being tried in France.
From memory, so i cant say 100%, but i think the unit has been built, or nearly finished and ready to try. Apparently the idea was first experimented with in 50/60's but actually used more power to operate than it created.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3857227.stm

So i was a tad off the mark, but at least it appears to be a serious idea now.

 

I don't think fusion will ever appear. They have never managed to get anything, even in the reseach lab. Even if you can contain a plasma indefinitely, no one has said you are going to get more energy out than you put in. The sun manages 'free' containment by gravity. These guys are substituting magnetics. I don't think I'd want 'a sun' contained 50km from my house when theres a fault...my guess is fusion is just a black hole for money for nuclear physics funding.
Wind farms look cool, once you get used to them. Farmers always winge about 'scaring animals'. They learnt years ago that they could ponse money out of the RAF for low flying compensation. They then take their scared sheep and bang them in a truck to drive them round the country to wangle the best EU subsidies for flock/herd sizes etc. Or put them on a slow boat to Saudi to be bled to death after weeks of stress. Farmers eh?
I'm sure Paul's right about the subsidy con-trick, but we have a lot of draughty old housing stock in our old towns. We could do with some new towns [like they're threating to do in Northants]. Then we would save some heating energy with better housing.
Tidal barrages are surely the only high power schemes available [Severn, Morecambe bay etc]

 

Something kinda related to this topic - but perhaps going off on a slight tangent is:-

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

The above web page (and associated book) could be seen as sensationalist - however, having done some of my own research, I fear the details on the above page are frightingly accurate.

The quicker we start getting alternatives in place the better. However, I believe it's really too late to prevent what has now become inevitable.

Getting back on topic, I think we need to accept that we can't rely on traditional fuels for much longer - and start supporting these schemes (wind turbines, etc) rather than campaigning against them.

Steve (doing my bit for scaremongering!)

 

Really can't see what all the fuss is about I've had a quantum singularity powering my Bike for 6 or so years now, even managed to get the containment field small enough to try powering a amplifier with
I'm with Graham on this, wind farms won't be THE answer, however they can/do contribute towards the N/Grid, we do need a lot more, but they don't look naff, they're quite cool in fact, granted I haven't got one on my doorstep, but I won't be unadeverse to one.
Paul R made a valid point on the issue also COST per unit, Gov incentives help/hinderence, maybe some of the budget should go to comissioning more working sites, at the end of the day its our planent, if we want to live here for while we better look after it.

 

Second home owners should have no rights at all IMHO - they've brought Devon and Dorset communities to their knees...

Wind farms are a great idea on paper, but they (allegedly) use more energy to build than they'll ever produce. Tidal and solar schemes are a better bet IMHO - when has the tide never come in or gone out? Wind's just too damn unpredictable...

..unless you're riding a bike back from my office that is - there's ALWAYS a vicious prevailing wind THERE!!!

 

Britain has had some pretty near misses with nuclear - it isn't just the Russians who had/have unsafe designs. Sellafield has a nice chequered history...

I went round Hinkley Point on a school trip once (in 1990) - and that was very interesting indeed. Quite an odd feeling being that close to something that could kill millions, and no doubt built by the lowest bidder... Nuclear is efficient, but nuclear waste isn't

What ever happened to geothermal energy? That idea is pretty cool...

 

i wonder if there was a similar amount of uproar when the first windmill was built or did people just go - 'thank dog for that, i don';t have to pummel grain between 2 stones all day just to have some bread to eat tomorrow'.
cheers


julian

 

Generation of electricity via solar panels is also hugely inefficient. Even over their entire useful lifetime - they won't produce anywhere near the energy it took to create them. At least - that's what I've heard, and I've not done any research myself.

 

Just to respond to the original question, I'm not opposed to wind farms at all. I actually quite like them and wouldn't object to having one near my house. I think they are a valid alternative power source but I don't they'll ever produce enough energy to be a viable substitute for "proper" power stations. Don't know how much tidal barrages produce but you can only put them in places that have a huge tidal flow, which isn't that many places. I think that even if we maximised all the potential alternative sources like wind farms, tidal barrages, solar power etc we'd still be far short of the country's energy requirements.

Michael.

 

Are they evangelical Christians?

I like the space mirror idea. The trouble is, someone evil (a bit like Dr No) would send a rocket up to re-focus the beam onto the Houses of Parliament, or something, and then where would we all be? A right pickle, that's where.

 

Better on your knees than tits up.

 

I guess the big social problem with wind farms is in places where the planners won't let you have a Sky dish, build a garage, extend your house or change the colour of your front door to puke green, they'll happily let some shady company install a large collection of old technology windmills.

Paul

 

Found this article about research on Public Attitudes Towards Wind Power
By Steffen Damborg, Danish Wind Industry Association.

http://www.windpower.org/en/articles/surveys.htm

Few interesting pattern are common sense but still rise a few eye brow.
The link will give you the whole (long) article if you like to read it yourself.

Here are some extracts.

People with no specific experiences with wind power believe that noise is louder than those who actually live beside turbines (Holdningsundersøgelse, 1993). Men believe that turbines are more noisy than women. Middle aged people are in general more critical than other age groups.

People living closer to the nearest wind turbine than 500 meters tend to be more positive about wind turbines than people sited further away from the turbines.

People living in a city zone (defined by speed limits) tend to be more negative than those living in a country zone. An explanation to that phenomenon could be, that people from the cities have a more romantic view of the countryside, where people from rural areas have a more practical relation to nature, as being a resource which should be put to productive use.